Effects of Intermittent Fasting on Health, Aging, and Disease

A great article on intermittent fasting in a peer-reviewed medical journal. (NEJM)

The article reviews the hundreds of animal and scores of human clinical studies of controlled intermittent fasting.

It reviews studies in animals and humans that have shown how intermittent fasting affects general health indicators and slows or reverses aging and disease processes.

The benefits of intermittent fasting are not simply the result of reduced free-radical production or weight loss. Instead, intermittent fasting elicits evolutionarily conserved, adaptive cellular responses that are integrated between and within organs in a manner that:

• Improves glucose regulation

• Increases stress resistance

• Suppresses inflammation

During fasting, cells activate pathways that enhance intrinsic defenses against oxidative and metabolic stress and those that remove or repair damaged molecules.

Preclinical studies consistently show the robust disease-modifying efficacy of intermittent fasting in animal models on a wide range of chronic disorders, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancers, and neurodegenerative brain diseases.

Periodic flipping of the metabolic switch not only provides the ketones that are necessary to fuel cells during the fasting period but also elicits highly orchestrated systemic and cellular responses that carry over into the fed state to bolster mental and physical performance, as well as disease resistance.

New England Journal of Medicine; December 26, 2019

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra1905136